I'm at a used book store and I found Different Seasons. It appears it is a first edition, but I'm not quite sure.

The website is saying Viking can be hard to determine, but everything matches up, even their old address, except the price. Every book by them, this website says it is supposed to have the price on the dustjacket of $16.95. There is no price anywhere on this dustjacket. Does that mean it isn't first edition? If everything else matches, but I can't find a price?

I've actually noticed this a lot. The website says there should be prices on the dustjackets, but I'm constantly finding them with no prices. Guess that rules it out? Salem's Lot for example, it says it comes in three states, and all three say they have a price, but all the old cover books I'm finding have no price.

Thanks for the info. What's to keep someone from just getting the correct dust jacket? Like, if I wanted to buy it, all the other flags are there, but not the jacket, and someone just throws one on it. What's to keep people from fooling people? Can I tell?

For most of King's earlier works, the jacket is 80-90% of the value of the book. The only reason to put a book club jacket on a first edition of one of King's books would be to deceive the unsuspecting buyer.

Most but not all book club editions don't contain the "markers" of a first edition first printing. The only exception I can think of is Black House. It has all the markers except for the unpriced dust jacket and has gold lettering on the spine whereas the true first has silver. It has the proper number line even.

Complete coincidence but i was in the bookstore today and saw the books being talked about here. They had all the markers except the price even the Barcode on the back. Most BCE feel different, cheaper. But these felt good except for the price on the DJ. It actually upsets me a bit that so much effort is put to copy true firsts.

The only books that are book clubs and book clubs only are "Storm of the Century" and "Secret Window" where none of these books have prices on their jackets, but it is the only edition. Different Seasons is tough because the bce and true first have the same address on the copyright page. So the dust jacket is crucial. Also, I have noticed with Different Seasons is that the true first edition has different colored front boards on the body of the book. Some bces are the same color where the true first is two toned blue.

Some people will also cut the price off the dust jacket and state it is price clipped and they will do this on a bce book jacket to trick you too. Price clipped jackets lower the value a lot too, so be weary of that. Also watch for true firsts of King's older books that have number lines. His older books don't have this, but the same book might like (7 8 9 10) so it would be a true first but a 7th printing and not have the value of a true first also.

Excluding the two books I mentioned, bce really have no value. Ebay allows sellers to do what they want and so many books on their site are bces when they are listed as true firsts. You have to be careful and know your stuff when buying something.

Also, people will swap a ruined true first jacket with a bce one because the original is ruined, That devalues the book a lot too as the jacket for older books makes it's value. People will swap jackets because they are tricking you or because they have a ruined jacket to replace. It happens.